Syed Hussein Alatas and the “Captive Mind”: Decolonizing of the Non-Western Psychoanalyst

This essay examines the work of Syed Hussein Alatas and his concept of the captive mind as it relates to psychoanalysis in the non-Western context. I argue that psychoanalysts have to go through a two-part process to decolonize psychoanalysis so as to avoid trapping analysts and analysands within the confines of the captive mind, as detailed in Syed Hussein Alatas’s many writings.